wuffles

Yep! He was impressed :D HEHE! We were laughing at him He was so cute. Your first spaniel x poodle?? They are a dime a dozen around our area. Don't be silly, you should have seen our idiots playing most of the night Not to mention mine were giving eyes to anyone who had food, especially Little Miss Garbage Guts who convinced quite a few people to give her some sausage!! ;) I love it!!!

I'm not stupid enough to think that bins will stop EVERYONE ignoring the poo. But I do think, at least in my area, it would help a lot. Or maybe I just live on a different planet to everyone else.

You sound happy this morning KA :D Ava's ears and head are all dry and fluffy again. I heard a comment from someone on our morning walk this morning that Kuma was the friendliest Akita he had ever met... I told him yes he is great isn't he, unless you are a guest who has overstayed your welcome... ;) As CleoJ says, the trialling runthroughs were.... interesting Anyway, Ava acted like she'd never heard the word "heel" before last night (at least I have video proof that she CAN heel when she wants to) and even did a poo in the middle of the heel pattern She spent most of the time trying to run back to the car where she knew her brother was, and I could hear him screaming from across the field. She did do well on her stand for exams and stays though, even when another dog came over and play bowed at her in the sit stay. At least we all had a good time afterwards hanging around, eating sausages and looking at all the different breeds of dog that walked past. And the doggies definitely enjoyed themselves. Storms predicted for this afternoon and all the way across the weekend No storms for our BBQ, please!

I don't think anyone needs pics and news about any of our ferals tonight

Still tossing up whether to bring the large black dog tonight or not. I'm so indecisive. ARGH. Page 100 for me too! Max#1, I am getting married in February Seems like a lot of organisation though when we've already been together for 9 years and lived together for 5...

There are lots and lots and lots of dogs in the world that would chase cats, including one of mine. I have no idea if he'd actually kill a cat or just chase it, but I don't take the risk. He's not difficult to manage. I think the issue here is more drive in general (mine is a lazy slug unless he sees a cat).

We'll probably be doing ours really early as I'm meant to be helping out so if you just want to see KTB and the others there's probably not much point being there before about 7! I can't decide whether to take Satch with me or not, he won't be doing the assessment but he likes meeting and greeting. The only problem is that he hates being tethered and will scream the house down while I'm trying to work with Ava or help out

One of ours doesn't even get up off his bed or lift his head when we get home It's actually quite nice having your own 'space' and it took a while to get used to our other dog who is a shadow.

KA, trialling runthroughs start at 6pm and all the other classes at 7pm. The presentation is on at 8pm.

I think I have to agree with this. Both my dogs have been trained using both a clicker and a marker word (yes). I get much more focussed excitement out of them using the clicker in general (unless I am using a really excited, high pitched tone, see my comments below). As soon as they hear the click, their ears go up, their attention is immediately on me waiting for a treat. Using the marker word, I get a similar response but toned down a bit. Some may argue that the clicker is better charged than my word but I can assure you they both know what "yes" means Also, different tones of my marker word get different reactions... if I am marking a behaviour and I want to encourage calmness (for example a stay) I use a softer, more even tone. If I want to encourage enthusiasm (for example during heeling) I use an excited, higher pitched tone. This is one advantage for me with voice rather than the clicker. I used the clicker often in the first few months of training them, but use the word 90% of the time now as it's more convenient.

Yes, I will admit lawn mowing is a good use of the male species. He'll also vacuum because he likes seeing all the disgusting stuff get sucked up in the Dyson. But aside from that... And Clastic... he was definitely only gardening that day because the inlaws were mean to him Speaking of husbands, I just spend an hour writing out addresses on our Save the Dates and I RAN OUT OF ENVELOPES. Gah! So much to organise.

A husband? What use would that be?

Awww, Kuma is such a handsome man. Ava likes to lie on the tiles too, but Satch won't even walk across them let alone lie on them. He's a big woosy. The video looked great, Max#1! It definitely takes a while to sort yourself out I managed to break Ava's drops lately with silly body language so have been working on getting them back. No video from us today. Turns out the dogs didn't do much at all that we could see. I could only find two woofs on the whole video (although it's 9 hours long and kind of hard to find stuff) and no chasies or anything KTB, Aussies are known smilers! Ava doesn't, but it looks like she's about to sometimes. She turns her little mouth up at the edge and... well, it never gets to a smile. I think that one of The Ark's girls smiles

Agree. I do think that one thing that is overlooked when it comes to picking up poo though, is the availability of bins. Might be an idea for councils to try actually providing a bin or two before going DNA-crazy. The only public bin in our suburb is at the local shops. I've walked for over an hour before with two bags full of poo and two dogs, and it is not nice at all Our local primary school oval is a designated dog off leash area outside of school times... dogs are only banned in school hours. I don't think I've ever seen dog poo on the oval so I don't know if that's a case of responsible owners or dedicated grounds staff.

.... I set up my laptop to film the pergola area today so I may have some interesting footage to show later. That is if I'm not too upset about their barking or general idiocy once I go through it They've been a bit hyperactive and vocal lately so I want to check they're not annoying the neighbours more than usual... To me LLW is no pulling, I don't care if they sniff or pee as long as they don't pull. Satch walks at the end of the leash which I have no problems with. Ava is getting better but still pulls a fair bit. Edit: Kyojin's LLW looks beautiful!! Unfortunately walking that slowly is just NOT an option for lots of the working breeds I meet, including Ava

Thanks guys The problem has only started recently, probably when I started working on duration heeling. I've been accidentally reinforcing the sloppy drops because for a while I didn't realise she wasn't going all the way down until someone pointed it out and I took a video!! I'll try all of your suggestions, she does love heeling games so hopefully it can be fixed. My body language and rewarding position probably does need improving as well. It's hard being a beginner and having a dog that is smarter than you

I don't think we need any more food but feel free to bring some, or anything you might like to eat if you don't like sausages! We don't have any dog treaties planned though, not sure if that would be a good idea... The BBQ area is quite nice, next to grassy bits and trees. Hopefully the weather holds out though I'll be at the assessment night early to help out and do Ava's runthrough but I don't think I am bringing the big black one (he'll be stuck at home like Hoover). If anyone wants me to take pictures or video of their assessments let me know as I'll just be hanging around from about 6:45pm...

Agree with separating at first, but I presume that eventually there will come a time when they are left together. We know that our older dog is very stable and will give warnings to the younger if she comes too close to his food but will not overreact. We did lots of supervising, supervising, supervising before we left them together with any toys or food. We started off just feeding their dinner a few metres apart. We made sure the younger one understands that stealing food is not on, and she learned very quickly to stick to her own meal. Ours get their Kongs together when we leave in the morning, and kibble scattered across the yard, and we have no problems. Both are low value items to the dogs. We do separate when feeding bones or raw meat. We once fostered a dog that was food aggressive and we did all feeding completely separately including treat balls.

Does anyone have any tips for fixing 'lazy' drops during heeling, that is dropping most of the way with the chest still slightly off the ground? If I give the command a second time she will drop all the way. She's also only doing it during heeling, I presume because she is anticipating moving off again. I'm only rewarding good drops but she doesn't seem to care

Here is the map:

I'd say there would be some good Youtube videos about rewarding with toys/play, I'll have a look when I get home! I will admit that in my experience so far I have had to do a lot more learning than Ava In our Bronze classes I was getting in trouble for confusing her with my feet and hands. I didn't know how to hold the leash and treat at the same time. I would step off on the wrong foot, then not know what to do next. I was a bit of a mess really! I'm still not perfect, but it takes a lot of practice and trial and error to work out how to do all this stuff. I'm still trying to decide what hand I should signal with I've done some work on teaching Ava that her rewards don't always come from my body like from a treat bag. I've been using little containers of food which I spread around our house or the oval. Then we do an exercise, I mark the right behaviour, then run with her to one of the containers and let her eat the food in it. She thinks this is sooooo exciting :p So you could probably do some of these kinds of exercises if you don't want to carry toys around everywhere, even putting him in a stay with a toy in sight, mark and release to go get the toy? Our "trialling" classes are all about the handlers really... as all the dogs know all the exercises. We get a lot of one-on-one advice about our handling which is what we all really need. If only you were in Canberra, Max#1...

He doesn't do any of these things, except drop when you get really tough with him

She is always hungry, an absolute garbage guts :p I don't fast her for training but most of the time she hasn't eaten for a while beforehand anyway (eg. 8 hours when we get home from work). Neither of my dogs get brekkie on weekends either just for the sake of convenience. However, if I get her kibble out and ask her to do some heelwork in the living room after dinner, she'll happily oblige She likes toys but doesn't go crazy for them. If she did, I would use them more often for training. I got her to retrieve a ball yesterday about 5 times in a row which I think is a record for us... after that she went back to her usual chase the ball, run straight past it and then run back to mum sans ball I'd just use the ball as a reward if I were you! A lady in our class shows her dog the ball, zips it up into her bumbag so the dog can't see it, does her exercises, releases her dog then throws the ball as a reward. I would like her to act a bit more animated in the heeling but we never have a problem with lagging so I am happy about that ;) The times she acts the most excited are when she decides she's going to heel when I haven't asked her to... not sure why she does this but I think she's determined to get some food out of me and gets excited about it! Satchmo isn't highly food motivated, nor does he have any interest in toys whatsoever. He is very difficult to motivate and this is why you never see videos of him

I love love love Bergamascos I would have seriously considered one of their first litter if we had been ready for another puppy back then!